Invisible (45 page)

Thank you to Tina Moore, RN, at MeritCare Dialysis Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, for giving me a tour of the dialysis center, and to all the patients at MeritCare who shared their experiences. Thank you to Jill E. Columber of Marion, Ohio, for telling me her inspiring story of living with, and triumphing over, kidney failure.
Thank you to Bill Wymard, marine biologist and owner of Aquarium Adventure, for helping me stock Peyton’s and Brian Gerkey’s imaginary fish tanks.

I am deeply indebted to my agent, Pam Ahearn, and to my editor, Kate Miciak, who walked snow-blind with me to find this story. I am grateful to others at Random House for their support, including Gina Centrello, Jane von Mehren, Randall Klein, Susan Corcoran, Alison Masciovecchio, and Gianna LaMorte.

Thanks to my sister, Liese Schwarz, for listening to many iterations of this story, to Julie Compton for reading the first draft, and to Chevy Stevens for reading all the drafts that followed. Thank you to the other authors whose friendship sustained me, including Pam Callow, Karen Dionne, Sophie Littlefield, and Brad Parks. A special shout-out to my genius website designer, Madeira James. Finally, I am humbled by, and grateful for, the kindness and generosity of Jacquelyn Mitchard, Lisa Gardner, and Linwood Barclay.

Thank you to my husband, Tim, for inspiring me every day and for being the best person I know. Thank you to our children, Jillian, Jonathon, and Jocelyn, for overcoming having a novelist for a mother, and for the countless ways you have enriched and blessed my life.

INVISIBLE

CARLA BUCKLEY

A Reader’s Guide

SISTERS

An essay by Carla Buckley

W
HEN
I
WAS YOUNG
, I
WOULD PESTER MY MOM
. S
HE
had three sisters, I knew, but one she never talked about. I’d met my aunt Jennifer a couple of times, but then the visits abruptly stopped. When would we see her again, I asked my mother. Why couldn’t we visit her? My mother was vague in her responses. She’s busy, she’d say. Or, we live too far apart. As a family, we had traveled all around the world for my father’s work, so I knew that crossing a few hundred miles wasn’t really the issue. There was something else there, but whatever it was, my mother wasn’t telling me. Deep down, I worried: if she could stop speaking to her beloved sister, could she stop speaking to me?

My mom had grown up during the Depression. She was the oldest of four sisters, and she regaled me with stories of how she once persuaded Jennifer to yell out the window to beg passersby
for a chocolate bar, and how she had to sleep under the kitchen table that night as punishment. She told me how she and Jennifer would take turns wearing one pretty dress in a single evening so that they could both go out on dates with soldiers on leave. She watched over her sisters when her father went to jail and her mother worked the night shift. It was a childhood beyond my imagining.

My mother wanted me to be a good sister to my own siblings.
You’re all you’ll have left after I’m gone
, she warned. But I wasn’t sure how to do that. I was troubled by the example she and my aunt set. Would history repeat itself in my own generation? Would there be warning signs, or would alienation strike out of the blue?

I never did see my aunt Jennifer again, and my mother passed away without ever telling me what had come between them. My other aunts wouldn’t tell me, either. Whatever it was had to be huge, though. It had to be enormous.

Years later, when I set out to write
Invisible
, I thought about that. What could come between two sisters who had once been so close? My imagination took flight. In writing this story, I would rewrite my own history. I would get to the bottom of the mystery that had haunted me all my life. Who had wronged whom? Had it been my aunt for committing some terrible infraction, or my mother for refusing to forgive her? I understood, or thought I understood, the power of family and the way silence could start out small, then filter down through the generations, taking on weight and substance and power. One way or another, I would work to understand my mother and why she kept her secret to the grave.

It proved difficult for me to come up with something plausible that could keep two sisters, who had once loved one another very much, apart. Everything I tried made no sense. My characters, Dana and Julie, kept pulling back together. They wanted to rely on each other, confide in each other. So was it really possible to excise someone so completely from your life? My mother evidently
thought so, or at least, she had tried, but I wondered,
Did her estrangement from her sister gnaw at her, tinge her dreams, and stalk her waking hours? As she watched me and my siblings grow up, did it remind her of all she had lost?

I remember returning home during my first college break. Everything seemed more intense—the autumn leaves burned with unusual brightness; the hardwood floors gleamed like gold. My mother’s homemade vegetable soup had never tasted more delicious. I’d only been away for a few months, but everything was colored with poignancy. I had already taken my first few steps away from home. I was becoming an adult and I would never again view my childhood home in the same, carefree way. Already I was pulling away from my younger siblings. Those complicated feelings, I thought, would be magnified for Dana, who would be coming home after many years of being away.

A homecoming to a large city—where people are always moving in and out—might go unnoticed. But someone returning to a small town, where everyone knows one another, and where loyalties and conflicts run deep, would have the right resonance. I decided to place my fictional small town in northern Minnesota, where I have spent the past twenty summers. In some ways, northern Minnesota feels like home to me; in other ways, it’s clear that I’m an outsider. It would be that way for Dana, too.

My first few attempts to reunite Dana and Julie were awkward. They were wary and watchful, and it was hard to believe that they had once been close. Would it have been that way between my mother and her sister, if they had ever met again? Now I began to think about things from my aunt’s perspective. What had it felt like to know that she had pushed her sister away? Were her dreams dark and fractured, too? I knew my aunt had made overtures to my mother, attempts at reconciliation that were shot down. At some point, my aunt gave up. Would it be like that for Dana and Julie?

Being capable of maintaining a long silence indicated that
there was a dark side to both Julie and Dana. It would have to color their relationships with other people. Having been away for so long, Dana might find she had nothing in common with the people she had once known so well. She might not be able to rebuild old friendships, or rekindle a lost romance. Too much time might have passed and the differences between them were insurmountable. I wondered,
Could you ever go home again?

Peyton showed me the world unfiltered, through her clear adolescent eyes. Like me, she would be bewildered by the estrangement between her mother and her aunt; she would wonder why her mother couldn’t tell her the truth, and she would resent Dana’s absence from her life. I loved the idea of a child who lived in the middle of the country dreaming of becoming a marine biologist. In many ways, Peyton is just like Dana. She, too, keeps the world at arm’s length. It was in thinking about this young girl who is overcome by loss but can’t talk about it, that I struck on the idea of having her begin her chapters musing on the one thing—the ocean—that she feels most passionate about, thereby revealing herself in the only way she can.

The ocean passages are among my favorite parts of the novel. Other than the occasional trip to the beach, I knew nothing about the sea or the life that inhabits it. During the day, I would write, and at night, I would read everything I could get my hands on about sea urchins, sharks, rays, and clownfish. The ocean is far more vast than I’d envisioned, inhabited by creatures I never knew existed. I was most astounded to learn that fish can behave in very human ways. The more I grew to understand these creatures, the more I grew to understand Peyton. And I saw how the ocean, like families, is much more than what is visible. There are all the undercurrents, the dark secrets that lie hidden beneath the surface. Some are washed ashore and reveal themselves. Others never come to light.

I’m cautious in mothering my own daughters. Talk to one another, I tell them. No one can understand you like your own sister,
I say. I speak from personal experience. There is no one who understands me better than my own sister, no one with the same sense of humor, with the same perspective on the world. I know that, no matter what, my sister will always be there for me. In the end, I’ll never know what drove my mother and her sister apart. But my mother had been right: there is no one like your sister. I just wish she had been able to know that for herself.

1. Do you believe it is ever justified for a company to put people at risk? When, and how much risk?

2. What lengths would you go to for your sibling? Would you make the same choices Dana and Julie made?

3. Do you think of Peyton as a typical teenager? What makes her unique?

4. A major theme of
Invisible
is the idea of going home again. Has Dana outgrown her hometown? What does that mean to you?

5. If Dana’s sister had not died, do you believe she would have made the same crusade against nanochemicals? If she had returned to Black Bear for unrelated reasons, do you think she would have taken up this cause? Why or why not?

6. Is there a company or industry that you would want shut down? Why?

7. On
this page
, Eric says to Peyton:

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost you, which is dumb.” He reached up and set his baseball cap facing forward
again. “Because how can you lose something you never really had in the first place?”

Do you believe this is true?

8. Is Brian Gerkey a villain? Why or why not?

9. On
this page
, Dana narrates:

A tube of sunscreen poked out of my purse. I’d automatically started to apply it that morning and caught myself just in time. A new tube, an expensive brand filled with antioxidants. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. Was the danger in the manufacturing process, or in the product itself? Until I knew, I’d hold on to it, just in case. It would serve as a reminder for all the other things I’d have to be on the watch for.

What would you do if you found that you had to live your life constantly checking products to see if they contain something you believe harmful? People already do this for other things, like cholesterol, or sodium. How would you manage if every product you used had to be carefully reviewed?

10. If you knew you would survive, would you willingly donate a kidney if there were only a chance that the person you were donating it to would survive? If so, what would the chance have to be before you would agree to do it?

11. How are Dana and Julie alike? How are they different? How do siblings help shape your worldview and personality?

If you enjoyed
Invisible
, you will be mesmerized
by all of Carla Buckley’s powerful novels.

Please read on for sample chapters of
THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE

BY CARLA BUCKLEY

Available now from Bantam Books
in trade paperback and eBook
.

I
T WAS QUIET COMING HOME FROM THE FUNERAL
. Too quiet. Ann wished Peter would say something, but there was just the soft patter of rain and the wipers squeaking back and forth across the windshield. Even the radio was mute, reception having sizzled into static miles before.

As they crossed into Ohio, Ann turned around to see why Maddie hadn’t called it, and saw her seven-year-old had fallen asleep, her head tipped back and her lips parted, her book slipped halfway from her grasp. The first hour of their trip had been punctuated by Maddie asking every five minutes, “Mom, what does this spell?” Ann leaned back and teased the opened book from her daughter’s fingers, closed it, and put it on the seat beside Maddie. Kate hunched in the opposite corner, a tangle of brown hair falling over her face and obscuring her features, the twin wires of her iPod coiling past her shoulders and into her lap.